Intervention Of Cognitive Bias Modification On Female Negative Physical Self

Negative physical self is a series of negative thoughts and feelings about one’s body.Excessive dissatisfaction with one’s own body image will lead to many negative results,and cognitive bias is very important in the development and maintenance of negative physical self.Therefore,it is very necessary to correct the cognitive bias of individuals with negative physical self.This study is divided into two parts.In the first part,60 female college students with fat negative physical self and 60 female college students with facial negative physical self were selected from 300 female college students by using the fatness sub-scale and appearance sub-scale of the Negative Physical Self Scale.They were randomly assigned to the experimental group(n=30)and the control group(n=30)in order to improve the body shape dissatisfaction and appearance dissatisfaction of the participants in the experimental group.The intervention was carried out by the dot probe task.In the second part,60 female college students with fat negative physical self and 60 female college students with facial negative physical self were selected by the same method with the first part.They were randomly assigned to the experimental group(n=30)and the control group(n=30)in order to improve the body shape dissatisfaction and appearance dissatisfaction of the participants in the experimental group by the word-sentence association paradigm.The results are as follows:(1)Compared with the control group,after four times of training,the negative attentional bias of the participants with fat negative physical self in the experimental group decreased significantly,and their positive attentional bias increased.The follow-up after 2 weeks showed that the negative attentional bias of the experimental participants still decreased significantly,but the positive attentional bias returned to the baseline level and their body shape dissatisfaction did not significantly reduce in the two post-tests;(2)Compared with the control group,after four times of training,the negative attentional bias of the participants with facial negative physical self in the experimental group decreased significantly,but their positive attentional bias did not increase significantly.The follow-up after 2 weeks showed that the negative attentional bias of the experimental participants still decreased significantly,but their appearance dissatisfaction did not significantly reduce in the two post-tests;(3)Compared with the control group,after four times of training,the positive interpretation bias of the participants with fat negative physical self in the experimental group increased significantly,and the body shape dissatisfaction decreased significantly.The follow-up after 2 weeks showed that the positive interpretation bias of the participants in the experimental group still increased significantly,but the body shape dissatisfaction returned to the baseline level;(4)Compared with the control group,after four times of training,the positive interpretation bias of the participants with facial negative physical self in the experimental group increased significantly,and the appearance dissatisfaction decreased significantly.The follow-up after 2 weeks showed that both the positive interpretation bias and appearance satisfaction of the participants in the experimental group still increased significantly.The conclusions are as follows:(1)Attention bias modification can reduce the negative attention bias of female fat negative physical self to the shape related information and increase their positive attention bias to the shape related information,but only the decrease in negative attention bias is sustained,and it has no effect on reducing body shape dissatisfaction;(2)Attention bias modification can reduce the negative attention bias of female facial negative physical self to the appearance related information and the effect is enduring,but it has no effect on increasing their positive attention bias to the appearance related information and reducing appearance dissatisfaction;(3)Modification of interpretation bias can not only reduce the negative interpretation bias of female fat negative physical self,but also reduce the severity of their shape dissatisfaction,but the improvement of body shape dissatisfaction is transient;(4)Modification of interpretation bias can reduce the negative interpretation bias of female facial negative physical self and reduce the severity of their appearance dissatisfaction,and the improvement of appearance dissatisfaction is enduring.